Racism, homophobia, drink-driving — end of the road for Jeremy Clarkson?

As part of our 15th birthday celebrations, we’ve trawled through the archives to bring you some of the best, weirdest and most salacious articles published on Crikey since our launch on February 14, 2000.

*This article was originally published on May 6, 2014.

Television presenter Jeremy Clarkson (pictured) has received a “final warning” from broadcaster BBC, after reportedly using racist language while filming hugely popular car show Top Gear. This isn’t the first time Clarkson has courted controversy; Crikey looks at the past “Oh, no he didn’t!” moments in Clarkson’s history …

December 2004: The BBC admits fault and agrees to pay compensation after Clarkson crashes a pick-up truck into a tree in Somerset, England, to test the strength of a Toyota. Local residents think the damage was caused accidentally or by vandals until the episode airs.

December 2005: Clarkson performs a Hitler-style salute and makes mocking references to the Nazis on Top Gear as he talks about the BMW Mini. He says the car has a satellite navigation system “that only goes to Poland”, in reference to the invasion of Poland that triggered World War II.

February 2006: Clarkson says the BBC does not take Top Gear seriously in the February issue of Top Gear magazine. He highlights that the network often replaces the show with live snooker coverage, which is “like billiards for poor people”, and that the “show has become a monster”.

December 2006: Four complaints regarding derogatory references to homosexuality are upheld by the BBC after Clarkson describes a car as “a bit gay” and “very ginger beer” (allegedly rhyming slang for the term “queer”).

July 2008: Clarkson is shown drinking alcohol while driving, which the BBC Trust says “could be seen to glamorise the misuse of alcohol”. The show’s executive producer says the hosts were in international waters and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of drink-driving laws.

November 2009: BBC producers are asked by the Romanian government to remove remarks made by Clarkson, who donned a pork pie-style hat to be accepted by the “gypsies” and talked of entering “Borat country”. He was also seen washing his face with “cool, refreshing communist water”.

August 2010:Clarkson says the Ferrari F430 “should have been called the 430 Speciale Needs”.

December 2010: Clarkson and his Top Gear co-stars dress up in burqas on the Boxing Day special, in “order to disguise themselves on the road”.

February 2011:Clarkson argues in his Sun column that without offensive humour, there can be no jokes, after making racial slurs against Mexicans in response to the country launching legal action against Top Gear.

December 2011: Clarkson is again accused of racism after a Top Gear Christmas special in India. He “mocked the dress of Indian dignitaries” while “driving around slums in a Jaguar fitted with a toilet” and made “repeated jokes about the country’s trains, food, history and conditions”.

February 2012:Clarkson says that striking public sector workers in the UK “should be shot”. Media watchdog Ofcom finds the comments were not in breach of broadcasting rules.

You can add plagarism to that also. A recent BBC doco on WW2 Convoy PQ17 produced by Clarkson plagarised large sections of the book “The Destruction of PQ17” without credit to the author; overpaid parasite.

Sadly this is not an isolated case. The English positively nurture these errant types who seem to believe it’s funny to be bloody rude about other people. The man is a bully with an inbuilt superiority complex which overawes the victims who find it too frightening to sail in and hit him where it hurts.

In an era of wall-to-wall ‘personalities’ that milk the media (and its clueless acolytes) for all their worth yet whose depths know no beginning, Clarkson is an anachronism. He sets out to offend those who itch to be offended, and succeeds (sometimes even beyond his own wildy egotistic benchmarks).

And I wouldn’t have it any other way. People (many, obviously) hate him, and what they generally fail to grasp is that that’s what tickles him. And for all that, he can be - and often is - quite insightful. Besides, what would Top Gear have been without him? Certainly not the global success it still is. Go Jezza!

So it’s ok to sit in a privileged position taking the public’s money and be offensive. Not to mention flout the law (drink driving) and encourage others to (supporting the burning of speed cameras). The guy is jerk and anyone supporting him is a jerk as well.

As I suggested to one of my UK friends, (who hates Clarkson with a passion,) why not send him out here?
I am sure George Brandis would love to give asylum to a racist homophobic bigot with a weekly newspaper column.
And unlike Mr Bolt, he at least has a sense of humour